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How Do You Answer When Asked by the Pit or Dealer.........

.......what brings you to town? I use to get asked this when I made blackjack trips to western WI. They couldn't believe I would travel all that way just to play blackjack. I really didn't have a good answer. Anybody have a good answer?

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I usually tell them I'm a professional gambler and I heard I can make quite a bit of money in this area because they tolerate big spreads and they have good rules on the blackjack games.

But on a serious note -- you may have to put a bit more thinking into a story than just making something up on the fly. Make something up that'll make it seem normal for you to be there often. Don't be like me and say I was on a road trip, because, when I showed the following week, then a month later, then the next week, and a few more weeks after that.....the whole road trip thing got kinda wonky. Although, I just played it off saying my aunt and uncle live nearby and I like to visit them and it's a bit of a road trip going out there/here. Or tell them your job is XYZ -- something that requires traveling a lot, particularly to the same areas frequently. If it's a shorter term play, you could say you just moved to the area (or are planning to move to that area) so you'll be going back and forth a lot. If it's somewhere you plan on playing for many months/years, that's not really going to fly and you'll have to say you're there for some business reason. If they are infrequent trips, you can say family/friends/etc.

"Everyone wants to be rich, but nobody wants to work for it." -Ryan Howard [The Office]

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I get this question all the time. Just say you’re visiting family or you’re in town for a wedding. Just don’t ever tell them you’re there for gambling LOL.

When they do ask where I’m from, I try to either tell them I’m from a non-gaming state, or a state where I know I have not been updated by OSN. The reason is because in OSN’s search bar, you can type in key words and if any of those key words match anything in your profile notes, then your profile will be one of the first to show up.

Here’s a scenario:

Example: Let’s say you go into a Wisconsin casino and you’re wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates hat. Let’s also assume this fictitious person is actually from PA and playing anonymously. You start getting heat from the pit, but they’ve got very little information to work off of, as you’ve given them an assumed name and no player’s card. Surveillance is trying to dig up what they can, so they go into OSN’s search bar and type in “Pennsylvania”, because of your hat. Now if you’ve ever had OSN entries from PA (which you do, because that was your home base) and if you’ve had recent updates anywhere else in the country, then your profile will be one of the first to pop up on the list. So now they find a profile that looks similar to you and they open it up. Sure enough, there’s multiple photos of you in there, to include your driver’s license, a photo of your license plate tags, and of course photos of you wearing that fucking Pirates hat! So now you’ve made the casino’s job too easy. Within a matter of minutes, they went from knowing nothing about you, to knowing everything.

Why not simply say, "I'm here to gamble."?
The pit likes and wants gamblers and you don't have to remember what you told them 2 days or 3 months ago.

You look a little out of place if you’re at some small joint and betting big, when they’ve never seen you before. It’s hard to play in the middle of nowhere Minnesota, at some small podunk casino, “where everyone knows your name” kind of place. They’ll start to ask what brings you in town? Where are you from? You have to have some kind of backstory. You can’t just say “I’m from Pennsylvania, but I traveled all the way over here to little ole’ Minnesota to gamble.” They’re gonna wonder why you’re not playing over there instead. And if you claim to be local, they’re going to question why they’ve never seen you before.

My wife or my daughter brought me to town to visit her friends (family). This way you are free to gamble and do not have to answer any details about the visit because it is all arranged by someone else.

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